The Benson Diaries

 

 

She is paying bills on the internet in bed when she says quietly, "Honey, I read on the internet about a place in California that has a special hypnosis treatment that might be able to help you."  I fold my arms, turning away from her.  "I am not forcing anything on you, I just thought you might want to check out the website with me." 

 

Still unwilling to disarm, only one eye catches her in my peripheral vision.  "What's it say?  What do they do?"   

 

"Look," she redirects the laptop screen toward me, "they have a bunch of stories on here that you should read."  Carefully and quietly she adds, "They sound like they have some of the same issues as you."  Cynical but desperate, I pour over the website for what seems like hours.

 

First there was not-her-real-name-Mary, a 47 year old mother of three who knew she had been abused but did not know to what extent.  Under hypnosis she discovered the truth and was treated by a woman she described as an "insightful miracle worker".  Mary went on to explain how the abuse she had suffered in the past had been keeping her from being able to trust even her husband.  Now they enjoy a much closer, more loving marriage.  "Ofcourse."

 

Then there was Elizabeth, a lesbian martial arts instructor.  "Obvious vulnerability issues there!"  Date rape at 15 caused her bullemia and depression.  Just ten sessions of hypnosis were needed to heal her inner child. 

 

The testimonial that hit unexpectedly close to home was Delia.  I had experienced every feeling she described; anger, depression, shame, guilt, fear, and disgust.  She, like me, had learned to anesthetize herself with alcohol at a young age.  Her compulsion to cut herself to release her demons was all too familiar.  The scars on my thighs just now beginning to fade, I can almost feel the razorblade in my hand again.  "I want to fix this."  She is snoring sweetly by the time I decide to ask her if she will make a roadtrip with me to see Dwayne Gallagher at his institute. 

 

The boys are fighting again.  I understand that brothers fight.  I have even learned to tune them out when they intentionally pester each other.  What I find absolutely astonishing though is that they manage to piss each other off even in the virtual World of WarMen over the internet! 

 

"He tried to kill my troll!" 

 

"He never paid me for the stuff I sold his Bork!" 

 

My sons are like night and day.  Rufus was my angel baby.  He was such a good baby, never fussed, slept through the night and rarely cried.  He was a joy to have around until until just the past few years when testosterone began to transform him into a mouthy, lazy 16 year old.  Some days I still see traces of my angel baby but other days he is the spitting image of his father.  Rufus and his father, Tyrone, both have egos so big they don't know where to park them, both consider themselves "players" and both are dangerously charming.  I found him with another woman when I was 6 months pregnant with his child.  Turns out he was not ready for the whole "Dad" thing. 

 

Lucas was the polar opposite.  He cried day and night and would not be soothed by anything I tried.  He was an underweight toddler who seemingly had absolutely no attachment to me!  He grew more defiant and difficult with each passing year until he was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Now that he is entering his teen years the medications he takes can hardly keep up with his ever changing body  and brain chemicals.  I wish I had gotten a family medical and mental health history before I married his father, Wade, a skinny, white Navy boy.  I was a young single mother in the Navy and he was willing to take us on so I married him.   I knew before I ever walked down the aisle that I did not want to be married to Wade.  He was a nasty drunk who tried to control me physically when he failed to turn me into his adoring wife.  I tried to appease him by giving him a child of his own but soon I just had to get us all away from him.  Life as a single mother struck me as less unbearable than having to have sex with Wade.

 

With two toddlers in tow I regretted leaving the Navy.  I had few marketable skills but I was determined that we could make it on our own.  I would never again put myself in a position of having to rely on someone else to support me and my kids.  Life on our own was tough.  I worked and took care of the kids non-stop.  I had no time by myself, no time to make friends, no energy left at the end of the day and no hope of changing our circumstances unless I added school to the todo list.  Going against every screaming warning in my head, we moved in with my parents so I could go to a computer technology school.  I knew the likelihood that my mother and I could get along was somewhere between slim and none.  We moved in when Rufus was 7.  We moved out after 2 years of bickering.  We have been on our own ever since... until now.

What I had hoped to see on the SEABHS website was a banner announcement saying that a particularly destructive virus had been detected in business networks which became active at noon eastern time today, 07/07/07.   The virus brought down networks across the United States, American websites suffered massive denial of service attacks, terabyte after terabyte of data disappeared from servers and storage devices and millions of desktop PC’s were rendered unbootable.  This, as part of a terrorist plot to mar the American Independence celebration, had alerted thousands of IT workers that they had better grab a quick hotdog off the grill and go into work as it was going to be a long night.  Instead, what Simutech warned against on July 4^th was only a new document and email virus which was pesky at best. 

 

I wanted to believe she, her boss, her ex and another employee were stuck at work due to some catastrophic event worthy of executing the company network disaster plan.  That would be a worthy cause for her to miss out on our holiday picnic.  The truth was that the network data link to the internet was down.  The telecom vendor had been called and they could only wait until it was restored before reinitializing the network switches and restoring external communication to the internet.  How many people does it take to just wait?  Apparently, it took three levels of management and a desktop engineer.  Meanwhile, the one engineer who could/should/would have addressed the problem single handedly was at home completely unaware of the issue, unpaged, untexted, unaware.  What I didn’t want to believe was that she and her ex were there because they wanted to be.